The festivities kicked off in earnest on Thursday with Brazil holding off Croatia for a 3-1 win, but all the focus in this country has been on the fabled Group of Death, and the United States will have its first of three difficult tests against Ghana.

But according to some who happen to be extremely loud and offended, Jurgen Klinsmann has already taken all the shine off the trophy.

"We cannot win this World Cup, because we are not at that level yet," the U.S. coach told Sam Borden in a New York Times Magazine piece that ran two weeks ago. "For us, we have to play the game of our lives seven times to win the tournament."

That's a very realistic, level-headed assessment of a program that's still struggling to compete with the best in Europe and South America. But for the sporting world at large here — the one that primarily ignores the game for three years at a time — this was an outrage. We're the American outlaws, after all! We can do anything! We put a man on the moon! And so on.

Maybe setting realistic goals and aspiring to something greater than short-term success is actually un-American. If that's the case, the U.S. team might be setting themselves up for true victory in the future. Because the current "American way" has meant a lot of talk and hype and "what if?" dreams and just as many exits by the Round of 16.

It all comes in the wake of leaving Landon Donovan, the most popular player the U.S. team has likely ever had, off the squad he's bringing to Brazil to try to make the impossible happen.

Klinsmann was forthright in his opinion that U.S. players should compete against the best in Europe. But Donovan took a few months off to settle himself, and has played all of his club games in North America since a seven-game stint with Everton in 2011-12. Factor in his age (32), and it all runs directly counter to what Klinsmann is trying to accomplish. He's not interested in honoring the past, and he's not looking for marketability above progress.

Part of the outrage comes from that marketing angle, and that his comments make it much harder for ESPN and the like to pitch a 1980 Olympic hockey scenario ahead of the tournament, where the plucky Americans could possibly upend Germany, Portugal and Ghana en route to the rest of the game's dominant world powers.

Within the same New York Times piece, Bruce Arena, the former U.S. manager, is noted as believing that the solution and, ultimately, a World Cup title for the United States will come from within the U.S. itself, from players that play exclusively in MLS and from a new system devised here. The thought that a solution to a major challenge could be devised within a vacuum while ignoring mountains of evidence otherwise would be cute in its naiveté if it weren't coming from someone who was in charge of the program for eight years.

And cute is all the U.S. had to lean on for decades. The role of the stubborn underdog will always be popular, but that act eventually wears thin for those consistently asked to play it. Klinsmann has a plan, and he's trying to see it through. And he has no interest in diluting the reality of the situation.

Klinsmann's comments got under the skin of a lot of people, some who are close to the game and even more who only pay attention once every four years. To the latter group, ignore them, as they're mostly in the business of screaming at the rain and hoping to get attention.

To the former, the time to look in the mirror and see if there's a better solution is long overdue. Klinsmann might not win a World Cup in his tenure as U.S. manager, but he's already doing more to put the team on a better path than his predecessors had.

In the meantime, there's soccer to watch. The U.S. has an excellent test with Ghana, a team that has befuddled them before. If they can get past them and hang in there with Germany or Portugal, Klinsmann's ultimate goal will already be a little closer.

Nick Tavares' column appears Sundays in The Standard-Times and at SouthCoastToday.com. He can be reached at nick@nicktavares.com